Pacanow Marriage Statistics 1878-1884 – #Polish, #Genealogy

by C. Michael Eliasz-Solomon

Stanczyk is obsessed with learning and understanding his ancestral villages. To that end, I spent the latter part of December analyzing the marriage records of Pacanów parish. As regular readers may know, Pacanów was in the Russian-Poland partition in the old gubernia (wojewodztwo/woj.) of Kielce which is north-east of today’s Krakow, Poland. Pacanów is now in the woj. of Swieto Krzyskie.

Today I have a graphic of a spreadsheet of the data I collected. Besides providing some demographics by the villages that made up the parish of Pacanów, it also gives you an inkling of the villages that comprise the parish [it may not be an exhaustive list]. You should also be aware that Catholic parish boundaries changed over time, just as they do today. So parish and dioceses may be different from earlier periods and also from those of the present time.

This was also an excellent exercise in practicing reading, transliterating, and translating Russian/Cyrillic to the Latin-based Polish alphabet. As always, the handwriting of the priest , the quality of the paper/book/ink and even the original scanning of the church records affects your paleographic efforts. So scanning church records for a limited set of proper nouns can improve your paleographic/translating skills. After all, I know the noun has to be a village on the map (some map from that time period) so even difficult paleographic challenges can usually be resolved.

Can you briefly explain to me how you are able to determine the various “Villages that comprise A Parish.” I am not a seasoned researcher, and am learning with every bit of information provided! Your website provides some of the most valuable information that I stumble upon! Thank you!
My Duplaga family originated in the Brzozow (south east) region. I have church records that are Not in a database. That task is on my “To Do List”. Brzozow is a town of approx 8,000 people at this point in time. Since it is a relatively large town, at least compared to a village-it has never occurred to me that the surrounding villages might be included in their records as a PART of the Brzozow Parish. Although I have noticed that the name of a small village 2 or 6 miles away, may appear from time to time. I have assumed that a Person in the Brzozow Parish is marrying someone From the small village Parish of Stara Wies or Golcowa. Another reason this thought has not entered my mind, is because I am aware of the various parishes that have been present in these two surrounding smaller villages for long periods of time. So why would they be a member of the Brzozow Parish when they have their own Old parish Church within their Village? With so many little wooden churches, in Poland-it appears to me that Every village has their own Parish, but maybe Not?
Perhaps, I am missing something here and you can delicately point it out to me???
MaryAnne

MaryAnne,
A good question! In my research for this article, I used the village listed in the margin note (near the record # / Akt).
Sometimes, only one of the couple are from the parish (USUALLY the bride as the custom is to be married in the bride’s parish) and a second village will be listed for the groom or possibly in the section of the marriage record where the three banns readings are enumerated. I did NOT record the secondary village in those cases.

If you were to look on the Internet, then you would go to the present day diocese and find the parish. Often (but not always), you will see the villages listed that “belong” (nalezal) to the parish. Look for the word NALEZAL in Polish (these are Polish websites) to find the other villages that comprise the parish.

Obviously, a town or city might only have one “locale”. A BIG city like Warsaw or Krakow would have many parishes. So in that case, a parish is only a part of that locale. But out in the rural areas, a parish has many villages/settlements, etc. that belong to the parish.

In the older records, I have seen it where the groom or his parents are from the Austrian Kingdom (Austria-Hungarian Kingdom / Hapsburg Empire) — this is because my Russian-Poland partition ancestral parishes Biechow/Pacanow/Swiniary are across the Vistula from the Austrian-Poland partition.